ma in studio art
THESIS EXHIBITION
malena strauch

In my current work, I explore the merging of nature and architecture, weaving together organic landscapes with built structures in ways that feel both familiar and surreal. I’m drawn to the tension between these worlds and enjoy creating scenes that feel grounded yet dreamlike, inviting questions about space, boundaries, and perception.

Rather than painting real places, I construct my own spaces from fragments of photographs, my surroundings, memories, and imagination. I layer and distort these elements until they become something new—spaces that feel suspended between memory and presence. Through shifts in formal elements such as shape, color, and perspective, I change the rhythm of the painting and encourage the viewer to move through the painting intuitively, sometimes with as sense of disorientation.
My process is flexible—I work mostly with acrylic and oil on canvas, sometimes focusing on a single piece, and other times moving between multiple works in progress. This back-and-forth approach allows ideas to pass from one painting to another.
Abstraction is an important part of my practice. It lets me loosen meaning and open up interpretation. Using small, recognizable elements—a window, a plant, a path, combined with loose, abstract shapes, helps me enter an in-between space: where architecture becomes landscape, where interiors open outward, where perspective collapses and shifts. These transitions reflect how we move through inner and outer experience—How our perception is constantly reassembling the world around us. How our inner and outer worlds are intimately connected and shifted based on the states of our Consciousness. In this way, my paintings reflect this dynamic of inner and outer, change and stillness, Self and surroundings.

Painting helps me explore these themes. I’m less interested in defining meaning than in staying present with uncertainty. My work often begins with a question, not an answer: Where are we? What kind of space is this? How does it feel to be here? Is this a place, a memory, a dream, or somewhere in between? I enjoy making paintings that are a little lucid, a little liminal, and a little loose.

Malena Strauch (b. 2001, Rosenheim, Germany) is a visual artist based in Fairfield, Iowa. Her paintings explore the intersection of natural landscapes and architectural structures, creating spaces that feel both grounded and dreamlike. She draws from real-life observation, photographs, memories, and imagination to build layered compositions that blur the line between reality and abstraction. 

Strauch earned her BFA summa cum laude from Maharishi International University in 2024, where she was Valedictorian and received the Outstanding Student Award in Art. She is currently pursuing her MA in Studio Art at MIU, with her thesis exhibition scheduled for June 2025 at the Wege Gallery. Strauch’s work is held in several private collections, and she has been commissioned for both digital and print media.